Homeopathy & The Lucifer Principle

[LFTKBS]

So after seven years, I've finally read Bloom's The Lucifer Principle. It's a great book, thought-provoking and well supported by endnotes, but I don't agree with everything Bloom has to say.

One of the things I found - let's say surprising - is his contention that homeopathy in its earlier incarnations showed promise, but that the allopaths - the Hg + bloodletting guys - successfully won the battle for dominance not based on the efficacy of their ideas, but on the false discrediting of the homeopaths.

Has anyone read TLP who has more information on this? Bloom only gives it about two pages.

[LFTKBS]

Not all at once, guys.

[LFTKBS]

Hello, my name's lifegazer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H LFTKBS and I am your pilot & guide for our next tour beyond the physical-realm and into the domain of The Divine-Mind.
During our journey, we shall be flying through existence and contemplating the very foundations of human-knowledge and experience. I will be pointing-out the lanterns of existential- awareness and showing you all, via reason, what they actually tell us.
During this journey, your mind is liable to blow-out as you contemplate "landmarks" which will challenge the established mind-sets of our time: scientific and religious. At such times, I shall advise you all to "belt up" and adopt the meditative position.
Kindly take your seats... relax... and prepare for take-off.


If this gets lifegazer 3 pages, maybe it can work for me.

[BTox]

Originally posted by LFTKBS
One of the things I found - let's say surprising - is his contention that homeopathy in its earlier incarnations showed promise, but that the allopaths - the Hg + bloodletting guys - successfully won the battle for dominance not based on the efficacy of their ideas, but on the false discrediting of the homeopaths.

Has anyone read TLP who has more information on this? Bloom only gives it about two pages.

Never read TLP but the assertion made is hogwash. True medicine won the battle for the simple reason that people being "treated" with homeopathy were dying.

[NoZed Avenger]

WEll, I'm not up to speed on the historical aspects talked about. One reason that homeopathy did all right in times past was that the competition was still fooling around with leeches -- i.e., was not demonstrably better.

IIRC, only when real advances started being made -- more like germ theroy, etc. -- did homeopathy begin to die out. It was at that point that it faded away -- as noted above -- because its patients, on average, did not make it nearly as often. As medicine improved, the benefits of using "traditional" or "western" (proven) medicine become more and more obvious. THAT put the homeopaths out of business, or at least moved the practice back to background noise.

Your mileage may vary.

[nick]

Originally posted by NoZed Avenger
It was at that point that it faded away -- as noted above -- because its patients, on average, did not make it nearly as often.

That's an interesting idea; sort of Darwinian vis-a-vis the homeopathy meme. I like it. It could also explain why homeopathy is back in favour today; because health care and general public health is on average so good that people don't often "get fatal diseases", they can afford to take homeopathic "remedies".

Here in France, they have a great health system, and a lot of homeopathy, and a lot of hypochondriacs. My doctor is a thinking, scientific guy, and I asked him why he had posters for homeopathic stuff up in his waiting room. He told me that it's what he prescribes when he knows that people don't have anything wrong with them. So maybe homeopathy has a place in the overall big picture of modern medicine, provided you aren't actually ill :)

[Ed]

Originally posted by LFTKBS
Hello, my name's lifegazer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H LFTKBS and I am your pilot & guide for our next tour beyond the physical-realm and into the domain of The Divine-Mind.
During our journey, we shall be flying through existence and contemplating the very foundations of human-knowledge and experience. I will be pointing-out the lanterns of existential- awareness and showing you all, via reason, what they actually tell us.
During this journey, your mind is liable to blow-out as you contemplate "landmarks" which will challenge the established mind-sets of our time: scientific and religious. At such times, I shall advise you all to "belt up" and adopt the meditative position.
Kindly take your seats... relax... and prepare for take-off.


If this gets lifegazer 3 pages, maybe it can work for me.

Get used to it. The bastards didn't read my book, either.

Sniff......

[NoZed Avenger]

Originally posted by Ed
Get used to it. The bastards didn't read my book, either.

Sniff......


Hey -- you should've jumped on that Gideon marketing scheme like the other guy with a book. Face it, guy, his marketing people have creamed yours in the god business.

Burning bush; thirty foot tall letters in living fire; the giant, booming voice out of nowhere; tv evangelists -- Say what you like, but HIS people know how to get the message out.

Time to dump your PR firm and get with someone who knows what they're doing.

[Jeff Corey]

How about a jingle?
The ever popular:

Christianity hits the spot,
12 apostles, that's a lot.
Holy ghost and a virgin, too.
Christiianity's the thing for you.

Did wonders for their recruiting effort.

[NoZed Avenger]

Originally posted by Jeff Corey
How about a jingle?
The ever popular:

Christianity hits the spot,
12 apostles, that's a lot.
Holy ghost and a virgin, too.
Christiianity's the thing for you.

Did wonders for their recruiting effort.


May I steal this for my own, nefarious purposes?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by BTox
Never read TLP but the assertion made is hogwash. True medicine won the battle for the simple reason that people being "treated" with homeopathy were dying.
Well, it's more complex than that. One of the reasons homoeopathy got a foot in the door in the first place was that it is the ultimate way of obeying the first principle of medicine - "first do no harm". If you do nothing at all, there's not much chance you're doing harm. It's quite astonishing how many patients will get better with conservative neglect, but in the days of leeches and bleeding and purging, and doctors just not being able to resist the temptation to meddle, there was a fair bit of harm being done which homoeopathy avoided doing.

However, homoeopathy always was a cult - the followers of the great profit Hahnemann. Since there was no sense or logic to what he preached, it was promulgated as a cult, and passed down relatively unchanged.

Mainstream medicine (for which he coined the term "allopathy", which was always intended as an insult and is not a term any doctor would subscribe to) always had a core of scientific inquiry and rationality to it. However nutty some of the ideas, there was always the possibility of introducing new ones and altering practice either by persuasive argument or persuasive demonstration of results. There was never any single cult of practice or personality which fundamentally blocked progress.

So, slowly, eventually, mainstream medicine (which always had more than a suspicion that Hahnemann was a complete lunatic) dragged itself away from the bleeding and purging and got into antibiotics and anaesthetics and so on. And in the middle years of the 20th century the progress was truly awesome. Many, many conditions which had been a death sentence turned into no more than a bit of an inconvenience. Homoeopathy looks pretty silly in the light of those advances.

But yes, the very success of modern medicine is one of the reasons people can now afford to go along with this new-age fad for useless medicines. When you're no longer in danger from scarlet fever or polio, you can afford to be silly. As a general rule, the more serious a person's illness, the less likely he or she is to get mixed up with "alternatives".

Rolfe.

[LFTKBS]

Thanks, Rolfe. I thought it was really strange that for as broad a thinker as Bloom is, he could give any credit to homeopathy. On reflection, though, perhaps he fudged it to fit in with his core idea.